The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change was a groundbreaker when it was first published in 1990, and it continues to be a business bestseller with more than 10 million copies sold. Stephen Covey, an internationally respected leadership authority, realizes that true success encompasses a balance of personal and professional effectiveness, so this book is a manual for performing better in both arenas. His anecdotes are as frequently from family situations as from business challenges.

Before you can adopt the seven habits, you'll need to accomplish what Covey calls a "paradigm shift"--a change in perception and interpretation of how the world works. Covey takes you through this change, which affects how you perceive and act regarding productivity, time management, positive thinking, developing your "proactive muscles" (acting with initiative rather than reacting), and much more.

This isn't a quick-tips-start-tomorrow kind of book. The concepts are sometimes intricate, and you'll want to study this book, not skim it. When you finish, you'll probably have Post-it notes or hand-written annotations in every chapter, and you'll feel like you've taken a powerful seminar by Covey. --Joan Price

Amazon.com Audiobook Review
Anyone who thinks the audiocassette adaptation of Stephen Covey's bestseller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, is a shortcut to reading the book has another thing coming. As a preview, the cassette is worth every one of its 90 minutes; as a substitute for the original, it will only leave you wishing for the rest. There's a reason 7 Habits has sold more than 5 million copies and been translated into 32 languages. Serious work has obviously gone into it, and serious change can likely come out of it--but only with constant discipline and steadfast commitment. As the densely packed tape makes immediately clear, this is no quick fix for what's ailing us in our personal and professional lives.

The tape opens to the silky-smooth, overtrained voice of the female narrator, who's responsible for tying together audio clips from actual Covey seminars. Leaving aside the occasional attempts at promoting Covey and his institute, her script does a first-rate job of making sense of Covey's own intense, analogy-rich style of explaining his habits. There's nothing simple about his approach to becoming an effective person. The first three habits alone--which have to do with personal responsibility, leadership, and self-management--could take years to master. Yet the last four are unattainable, the narrator insists, if you can't acquire the personal security--the "inner core," says Covey--that presumably comes from a mastery of the foundation.

Throughout our lessons, Covey's presence is both learned and thoroughly appealing. He drops references to the likes of Socrates, T.S. Eliot, and Robert Frost with the aplomb of an English professor. And his knack for mixing everyday stories with abstract concepts manages to clarify difficult issues while respecting our intelligence. You could argue that the cassette is nothing more than a clever marketing tool for selling another few million copies of the book. But, even at that, it's worth the investment in time and concentration: in the end, we're moved to learn more about integrating all seven habits in our struggle to become better and, yes, more effective people. (Running time: 1.5 hours, one cassette) --Ann Senechal

Review
Dun's Business Month When Stephen Covey talks, executives listen.

M. Scott Peck author of The Road Less Traveled The 7 Habits have the gift of being simple without being simplistic.

Review
M. Scott Peck author of The Road Less Traveled The 7 Habits have the gift of being simple without being simplistic.

Review
M. Scott Peck author of The Road Less Traveled The 7 Habits have the gift of being simple without being simplistic.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Despite having sold many millions of copies, Stephen Covey's groundbreaking book remains as fresh, helpful, and important as when it was first published. Such longevity is a testament to the quality of the insights that Covey offers: Eschewing easy fixes and simple-minded formulas, his writings offers a comprehensive and highly detailed program for invigorating your career as well as other aspects of life. You won't be able to breeze through this book (the writing is sometimes complex and involved), and you won't be able to apply Covey's ideas half-heartedly (the vision outlined requires serious effort to realize), but if you're willing to do the work, you'll reap the enormous benefits that many other readers have discovered and put into action.

ANNOTATION

With a balance of theory and practical examples, this guide to personal and professional life describes seven principles of life management. Targeted toward anyone who is interested in personal change, it guides you through private victory, public victory and renewal.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity -- principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.

SYNOPSIS

Stephen R. Covey's incredibly successful book is a pathway to wisdom and power. It offers a revolutionary program to breaking the patterns of self-defeating behavior that keep us from achieving our goals and reaching our fullest potential, and describes how to replace them with a principle-focused approach to problem-solving.

FROM THE CRITICS

AudioFile